


finding Kate

by qwanderer



Series: brickverse [3]
Category: White Collar
Genre: Angst, Eventual Happy Ending, F/M, Fix-It, Gen, Grief/Mourning, I promise, Suicidal Thoughts, apparent character death, autistic kate moreau, no major plot point left unturned, spoilers for pretty much everything
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-29
Updated: 2016-03-11
Packaged: 2018-05-23 23:25:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 16,243
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6133726
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/qwanderer/pseuds/qwanderer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There was a part of Neal that was enough like Kate that he could read enough of her to know how beautiful she was, and that insight was what made Neal believe that he was the luckiest man in the world.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Creating the Mask

**Author's Note:**

> Okay I actually tried really hard not to make this slashy but if you've got the right goggles on you'll still see it.
> 
> I've got an ending in mind, but then I still haven't seen the end of the series, so I'm not sure how well it'll mesh (or how long it will take to write). Anyway, we'll see!

Prison was, more than anything else, boring. 

Kate's visits were the highlight of his week. Always. He never got tired of hearing her talk about her days, what she'd been painting, what she'd seen people wearing on the street on the way there. 

But over the last couple of months, those visits had gotten a lot less enjoyable. Kate got more quiet, more nervous. Her hands started to shake. 

_Someone's following me. I can't tell you about his face but he has a ring._

_The man left me a message. He told me he knew things, he has influence, and if he called the cops I'd be the one ending up behind bars. I don't want... I'm sorry, Neal. I don't want to be where you are right now but without you to come and visit me._

_He wants to know things. He wants to know where the stashes are. I told him there's only one and only you know where it is. I'm supposed to be asking you._

_I know I need to go to ground, but I can't. Not when you're in here._

_I'm afraid, Neal. I can't do this anymore. Not by myself. Whenever I did anything like this, you were always next to me. Letting me know whether I was doing okay._

He held up a hand to the glass. _I'm right here,_ he wanted to say. _I know you can do this._ But at the same time, he wanted to tell her not to run. To stay with him. To wait until he was out, until he could join her. 

He couldn't bring himself to say either one. 

She needed to disappear. That was the only way she'd be safe. 

* * *

(she _had_ to be safe.) 

* * *

Neal knew he wouldn't last in here without Kate's visits, though. Knew he'd go insane imagining what might be happening to her. So he gave himself something to focus on, something he could really get his teeth into. Something he could remind himself of whenever he started to lose himself in the guilt that he wasn't doing enough. 

Escape. 

He actually hadn't expected to have a workable plan before his release. Four months. And it barely took him more than one. 

He was out. 

It didn't feel much like freedom. Not when he had so little idea where to go next, how to help. 

He had the address of the place she'd been living in order to be close enough to visit, knew she'd be gone. Knew it would be the first place the feds would look. The first place Peter would look. But he needed to go. Needed to see for himself. Maybe she'd left a clue. 

* * *

She was gone, of course, the apartment cleaned out. A very familiar wine bottle the only thing she'd left. 

Their Bordeaux bottle, their container for a future imagined. 

She could have left a note in it. Hell, she could have left anything in it - nuts and bolts, a handful of sand, actual wine - and that would, at least, have meant some kind of hope that they would see each other again. But Neal knew Kate well enough to know that an empty bottle meant she couldn't imagine a next step for them. 

"The bottle means goodbye," he told the man beside him, the agent who'd come to collect him. The man himself. 

Peter Burke. 

He looked... sad, frustrated, almost disappointed to have found Neal so easily. He sounded pitying, that Neal had escaped only for an empty apartment and an empty bottle. 

Neal didn't want that, not right now. 

It ran contrary to his instincts as a con not to make some use of it, though. But he wanted to turn it around, make the guy's day better. He liked those cons a lot better than pity cons. 

He scanned Peter, looking for an in. And he saw something, in the fine layer of dust on the agent's suit jacket. 

Something remarkable. Something, maybe, he could help with. 

He wasn't sure what he could get out of this, so he stalled, asked for a meeting in a week. But if this was the man who had caught him, twice, maybe this was the man who could help him find Kate, help him save her from whoever it was who had thrown a shadow over both their lives with his threatening messages and lurking presence. 

* * *

(He had to try _something._ ) 

* * *

He could work for Peter. He could work his contacts from both sides, if he got out, even on a leash. Help friends, send the feds after enemies, dig until he found who was after Kate and stop them. 

Peter... complicated things. Because he liked Peter. Didn't want to lie to him. It was too important that he stay working with Peter, at first because of Kate, and then because of Peter, too. 

And then Mozzie found the picture. 

He didn't want to lose Kate, not now. 

"Lose her?" Mozzie asked. "I just found her!" 

"Well, so did he." The man she was afraid of. The man with the ring. 

* * *

Kate had always loved the classics. Loved tricks that worked the same, time after time, tricks that became smooth, worn and familiar with use. 

She'd always loved codes, hidden meanings, patterns that she could find underneath the obvious. She always loved knowing something, seeing something that other people couldn't. 

Combinations of common things in uncommon ways. The everyday wasn't everyday with them, even if from the outside, it looked that way. Just food, wine and candlelight were different with her than they were with anyone else. 

Food. Wine. And candlelight. 

Neal smiled, picking up the bottle. 

* * *

"I want to come home," she said. Neal could hear the frightened honesty in her voice as she repeated the words, almost exactly the same in tone and emphasis. "I want to come home." 

It was so good to hear her voice, to hear her like that, like herself, just for him. But he needed to help her. He needed to find her. 

No one else understood. Not Peter. Not Elizabeth. Not even Mozzie, not completely. 

He knew he'd have to do a lot of this on his own. And it would take time, as much as he hated that. Preparation. Digging. 

But in the meantime.... 

Peter had called them partners. 

And the work was good, the work was almost as much fun as the con had been. 

He could do more than survive this. He could thrive here. 

This deal was looking like one of the best decisions he'd ever made. 

* * *

Peter had the ring. Peter had Kate. 

No, it couldn't be Peter. 

It couldn't be. 

Neal felt dizzy, like he was floating away, untethered. He wasn't really aware of leaving the Burkes', of getting home, but there he was, and there was Mozzie. 

He had to tell Mozzie. 

"It's Peter." 

He heard the words coming out of his mouth, and it shocked him, as if saying it aloud had made it real. Turned his whole world upside down. 

And here Mozzie was, just sitting in Neal's apartment with the chess pieces sitting in their places neat as you please. 

No. 

Not when everything else was scattered and spinning. 

He smacked them sideways and down, watching them fall. 

He wasn't sure how long he stared, but by the time he noticed anything else, all the pieces were still. 

_Why does this hurt so much?_

Thinking that Kate might be playing him had never hurt this much. And he'd had to consider it. Even Neal couldn't read her every impulse and motivation. Her moods, yes. That she loved him, yes. But there was so much more to her, so much hidden. 

Kate was Kate. She never asked to be trusted. She never asked for honesty. She made Neal want to be better, but not in this wrenching, terrible way that Peter did, this way that felt like it wanted to reach right down to his core and untwist whatever had gone crooked so long ago. 

He'd come so close to letting Peter change him. And now to find out that Peter Burke wasn't any of those things he'd seemed to be, those reasons Neal admired him and let him have so much influence - it was devastating. 

Peter's hand had wormed its way inside Neal's chest and was clenching down on his heart. 

Things were surreal, as they continued working the case they'd been giving. Everything Peter said, everything Peter did appeared in a whole new light. Could it all be fake? Could someone really pretend that well to be a good, honest man? 

No. 

Maybe. 

No con was impossible. 

And he had the ring. 

If Peter had Kate, then nothing was the way Neal thought it was. 

And maybe the worst part - there were too many worst parts to count, here, but still, maybe - was that if he could make a mistake like this, then maybe he could be making a mistake about Kate, too. 

* * *

(But he _really, really_ didn't think so.) 

* * *

(But then he'd started to trust Peter, too.) 

* * *

_Back my play,_ Peter had said to Neal, a Neal who was confident with a gun in his hands, a Neal who'd practically just threatened him with one in front of a crowd of people. _Back my play._ He had put his life in Neal's hands on this case and now he was trusting Neal again, as if Neal had no reason to wish him harm. 

Neal reminded him of the reasons. 

_We'll talk about this later._

_Trust me_. 

Damn it. 

Damn it. Damn it. 

Neal _did_ trust him. And that had the potential to be the biggest mistake of his life. 

* * *

(But he really didn't think so.) 

* * *

After the case was over, they had a long talk about everything that had happened with Kate, the rings, and Fowler. 

Most of it had been good, but.... 

Peter's words kept echoing through his head. 

"I looked into her eyes. I didn't see concern for you." 

Neal could picture concern on Kate. Didn't think Peter would have recognized it. But that wouldn't be something that could be easily explained. 

He still had to try. 

"So you really don't think much of Kate, do you?" he asked after Peter had made another one of his comments as he drove them home from a case. 

"Neal, I...." Peter sighed. "She's beautiful. She seems smart. I can see why you might have wanted her by your side. But I don't think she's in it for the same reasons you are. I don't think she's giving it as much as you're pouring into it. And that doesn't seem fair to you." 

"She came to the meeting," Neal argued. "When you said you wanted to talk about me. She put herself in danger. What does that tell you, Peter?" 

Peter raised his eyebrows. "She pointed a gun at me." 

"And I can pretty much guarantee you that it wasn't loaded. Kate... she doesn't have a problem with going through the motions, but she hates getting her hands dirty." 

"That's your argument? She _hates getting her hands dirty?_ Neal...." 

"And what if I told you she would have shot you? For me? Peter, there was no reason for her to come to that meeting unless she was concerned for me. And you pretty much shoved down her throat what all this is doing to me. Yes, it's twisting me up, okay? I know, I _know_ it's twisting her up too. She just doesn't show it like I do." 

Peter just shook his head. "And they call you the con man," he said. 

Neal had always known, right from the beginning, that Peter might have been able to see straight through Neal but that he had no idea how to read Kate. 

There had been a time when Neal might have thought to play that to his advantage but right now the only thing that mattered was _finding her._ The only thing that mattered was being on the outside so he had the opportunity to help her when he figured out how. He wouldn't run right away because Peter would catch him. But he _needed_ to be available to help Kate if it was possible. 

Peter was a good man, in so many ways, but he wouldn't even give Kate a chance. Because he could read people, but Kate wasn't just people. She was something else. Something more. Something spectacular. 

Peter could read desperation on Neal, fascination, maybe even obsession. But somehow he was blind to this being real love. Every time Peter's wife and Kate came up in the same conversation, he would get this _look_ on his face. Like he knew he had the real deal, but he still thought Neal was being conned. 

"You think love is like bearer bonds," he said, letting his head fall against the car window. "It's not." 

Peter squinted at him sideways. He didn't even have to ask the question aloud. 

"You think, if we compare these two, and there's a difference, aha, you've caught a forger in a mistake! That one's not real. But love isn't like bonds. It's like paintings. You can't look at an early Picasso and say that it's fake because it's different than the Picasso most people have seen. It's still Picasso." 

Peter frowned. "You know I respect Diana. And you still think I'm one of those people who think love always means the same thing? Always looks the same?" 

Neal shook his head. "No, Peter, you're not getting this. Sure, you look at them and you think, okay, that's a registered bond, it works differently than a municipal bond, and they're still both valid. But you can still hold them up to the same kind of scrutiny, in their own ways." 

"Neal...." Peter looked frustrated now. "I don't deal with people's love lives the same way I deal with my cases. I don't look that close. It's not my business." 

Neal huffed. "Except, apparently, mine." 

"No, Neal. The only thing that's my business, professionally, is seeing how she affects you. It's not my job to make judgments about whether it's real." 

"But you do anyway." 

"Neal... as your friend, yes, there are things I see that concern me." 

"Would you recognize an early Picasso if you saw it?" He watched the expression on Peter's face as it changed thoughtfully. "One not in his catalog. Some lost work found again." 

"...I don't know," Peter had to answer at last. And then, "Probably not." 

"Would you trust me to?" 

That question made Peter's jaw tighten. 

"Trust me to _know,_ not trust me to tell you." 

"That's not...." Peter sighed. "Yes, okay?" 

"So trust me when I say that Kate's the real deal, okay?" 

"You know as well as I do that a believable persona is easier to create than a perfect forgery." 

Neal's brows drew together. It felt like this whole low-level long con, him and Peter, had just spewed its inevitable backlash all over him. 

El... she radiated warmth and mischief and her eyes sparkled and invited you in. Neal could see the appeal of that - had banked on the appeal of that more times than he could count, if he was being honest, had banked on it working a second time on Peter. And it had. And so here he was. With a Peter who believed he was only what he'd billed himself as. 

Someone who wanted in to the kind of life Peter had. Someone who, at heart, valued the same things in people. The true Neal, where the others were only masks. 

But Neal wasn't enough of a narcissist to fall in love with a mirror version of himself (or, at least, one of his more dominant personalities). He didn't want what Peter had. 

He wanted Kate. 

"And so you think, what, that she couldn't pull off believable to you if she wanted to?" he argued. 

"No, I think she just doesn't care enough to put in the effort." 

Neal couldn't look at Peter right then. He turned away as he said, "Well, maybe she's just trying to be honest." 

"Neal... I don't scrutinize, and I stand by that, but I do look for certain things in the people who get to see my friends at their most vulnerable. I want to know that they actually care what happens to my friends. I talked to her, I looked in her eyes, and I didn't see that." 

"You don't know her," was all Neal would reply to that. 

That was the problem, and Neal didn't think it would help to explain how Kate was, why she was different. Wasn't sure if Kate would think of the revelation as a betrayal, even now. She'd worked so hard to seem normal, to blend in. 

Peter would think of that effort as a deceit, as shallow, because he could not read the parts of Kate that were most Kate, couldn't wrap his mind around the concept that just because it was intentional didn't mean it wasn't honest, that everything Kate did was an honest effort to give of herself to people who only spoke a language she could never quite manage to be fluent in. 

There was a part of Neal that was enough like Kate that he could read enough of that to know how beautiful she was, and that insight was what made Neal believe that he was the luckiest man in the world. 

That was the part of Neal that could sit for hours, deeply involved in forging a painting, in reproducing every tint and every stroke, making something identical rather than making something unique. 

That was the part of Neal who had taught himself to crack bank vaults, to listen for the smallest noises and feel for the tiniest vibrations, and who came back from a safe-cracking job cranky and oversensitive and feeling every little jar like it was an earthquake. 

That was the part of Neal who listened, fascinated, to Mozzie rambling about all the things that were and all the things that might be and all the techniques he knew for turning the tide. 

That was the part of Neal who, when he was by himself and contemplating some reckless prospect or dangerously unknowable future, would tap his right thumb against the nearest hard surface rhythmically, just to feel something steady and predictable. 

That was the part of Neal who poured all of himself into a lie until even he wasn't sure where he ended and the lie began. 

The border between face and mask could be so fluid. 

If Kate poured herself into her face enough for Peter to read it, he would know it for the lie it was. Kate wasn't her face. That wasn't where she lived. She lived in her work, in her words and in her codes. Kate lived in her hands. 

When Neal poured himself into his face, it was only half a lie. Manipulating what he showed, holding back, withdrawing - he'd learned those. He'd had to. It wasn't in his nature. For Kate, it was just who and what she was. 

Neal tried not to withdraw from Peter, but that was _part_ of his mask for Peter. He didn't show the FBI agent his quietness, his twitchiness, any of those parts that were like Kate when she wasn't on guard. Because they'd seem suspicious, to Peter. 

That had been the right play to get him out of jail, to keep looking for Kate. But it wasn't going to help win him sympathy on his quest. 

Neither, probably, would the part of this personality that flirted with everything with a pulse. But flirting was the best way to keep his hand in, from here. Flirting was a con, it was a game. Kate understood that. Kate had never been a game. 


	2. Becoming the Mask

Mozzie was suspicious of everyone, Neal knew, and that was his character and his prerogative. He wouldn't have been Mozzie if he took anything on faith. 

But it was wearing Neal down to be getting the "Kate isn't trustworthy" lecture from both sides, now. 

"I need to talk to Kate," Neal insisted to him. "Then I'll know." 

He knew he was mostly speaking to himself. 

Mozzie would always be Mozzie, and Peter would stay Peter. They'd never give up on trying to get him to do better in life, to ask for more, even if their ideas of how to go about that varied wildly far away from not just Neal's ideas, but each other's. 

He was still a little bit blindsided when they teamed up to stage an intervention beside Robert Moreau's grave. 

* * *

(He wouldn't listen to them.) 

* * *

(He _wouldn't._ ) 

* * *

It was perilous, being so open with Peter. Projecting so much of himself. He found out something about that when he was drugged and in danger and, apparently, feeling expansive. 

The thing about conning Peter, a long, deep one like this, was that the more Neal studied him, the more Neal wanted to see him happy, see him proud. 

The more he wanted to be the mask he wore for this con. 

Because Peter Burke might have been a fed, but his concern for people transcended his job, transcended the law. 

Neal felt fluid, like this, head swimming with drugs, limbs loose. He felt like he'd lost his limits, felt like he could pour himself into any shape he could imagine. 

He'd already started testing to see if he could make his voice rise up out of him and really _fly._

But Peter was here, and Peter wanted him quiet. 

He wondered if he could pour his whole self into the shape of what Peter wanted to see. 

"The con is about people," Neal told Peter earnestly. Told him about charming people, flattering people, making people smile. Told him about giving people something to remember. 

Neal liked flying. 

He wouldn't pour himself out like this for just anyone. Nobody else... nobody else _wanted_ to see all this, anyway. Kate liked him just fine with all his secrets all in place. Moz cut him off if he started to get too drunk. 

They liked him whole. _He_ liked him whole. Peter was the only one who got to see him cut open like this. Peter was allowed. It didn't feel dangerous... no, it _did_ feel dangerous. And it hurt, too. It felt wrong to be so open. But Peter would stitch him up again, he knew, if he had to walk to the ends of the earth over roads of broken glass to do it. 

Was that trust? 

"You're the only one I trust," he told Peter. 

But no, that wasn't quite right. Because when he was other places, other times, when he was other people, trust meant something different. Trust meant Kate and Neal sleeping side by side, no pain, no being cut open, just knowing that they could be whoever they wanted to be with each other. Trust was knowing Mozzie wouldn't ask questions he didn't want to know the answers to. 

_Trust is a weird thing,_ Neal thought, dazed. 

"Don't pick this," Peter said. 

Neal poured himself sideways into that request. It was okay. Peter would stitch him up if he just counted backwards from ten and didn't move the thing from his wrist. 

* * *

Mozzie still helped him look for Kate, though he whined about it. Mozzie was the best. 

"Thanks, Moz," he said. "I know you're doing your best for me on this despite the whole intervention thing." 

"Yes, well.... the intervention didn't take. And it won't. I've accepted that. Your course has been well and truly set. All I can do now is try my best to avert disaster for all involved." 

Neal looked at him, braced for an answer before he even asked the question. "Do you really think...." 

"It's not that I don't like Kate," Mozzie interrupted. "It's not that I don't understand how much you care about her. Or even that she really does care about you. But are you really what the other needs right now? She wants to run, let her run. The way you are now... you might be what's dragging her back. Keeping her in danger. You're still in prison, for all practical purposes. I think you should cut her free. Whether that means cutting yourself free, or letting her go." 

"She's really scared," Neal argued. "You didn't hear her. The way she was talking on the phone. She wants to come home. She won't feel safe until she does. And I need a friend on the inside to make that happen. I need feds who'll work with me." 

Mozzie sighed. "You do what you think is best," he said. "I'll keep... trying to put the pieces back together." 

* * *

Keller.... 

Keller could never in a million years read what Kate was truly thinking. He thought he could, but he made a lot of assumptions that were flat-out wrong. 

When the three of them were together, she'd treated the both of them with the same cool civility that was the default she'd developed over the years. Keller had always thought she just enjoyed playing ambivalent and hard-to-get. 

The truth was so far from that. 

So when he taunted about his chances with Kate, how he'd forgotten how it was when she talked in her sleep.... 

He was working with whoever had her. He was working with Fowler. Part of the whole knotted conspiracy. That was the only way he would have seen her asleep. If his hints were even remotely true. 

Neal wondered if Keller intended to provoke jealousy. That wasn't what he was doing. He now had Neal's curiosity, and his fury. 

(And as it turned out - anger, jealousy, it didn't matter to Keller. All he wanted was that forged bottle. That damn Franklin bottle. Neal had played right into his hands.) 

* * *

Things went on like that for a while. 

Peter kept dropping these hints. _Stop chasing Kate. You can do better. Live the kind of life that I can approve of._

Neal kept muttering, in response, about how _some people_ would pay $104 million for Picasso's _Boy with a Pipe._

And he kept trying to find Kate. He was getting closer. He was almost there. 

"Happily ever after isn't for guys like us," Mozzie'd told him. 

"It is this time," he replied. 

* * *

(He _really, really_ hoped.) 

* * *

The tug-of-war kept up through the whole time they were planning the theft of the box. 

Peter kept at him, and at him, and at him. 

_I gave you a shot at a better life._

_We all have a weakness. Kate's yours._

_You're fooling yourself if you think Kate's on your side._

But Kate was just a few steps away. Kate needed his help. Of course he kept going. 

He couldn't let anyone stop him, not Fowler, not Alex, not Mozzie, not even Peter. 

And Peter would try to stop him. He'd proven that. 

So the person he called was Elizabeth. 

* * *

"You and Peter. How'd you know?" he asked. 

"Well, I think there's a difference between loving the idea of someone and actually loving who they really are." 

Neal was going to miss Elizabeth, but.... 

If Kate was more idea than flesh and blood, where did that leave Neal? 

Running from a life full of people who could not or would not see the real Kate, the one he knew. 

He would go. 

But Peter was here. 

Peter was still on about it. Here on the tarmac. Kate so close by. Telling him that she wasn't worth it. 

She was. 

(She was. She _was._ ) 

But Peter was reminding him how much he was giving up to be with her. And both of the halves of the exchange were weighing heavy on Neal now. 

"You said goodbye to everyone else. Why not me?" 

Peter sounded hurt. 

"You're the only one who could change my mind," Neal answered, but what he heard himself saying, in his mind, was _You're the only one who can change **me.**_

Peter could tip that balance. He could change Neal so that being a hero, being with the Bureau, being friends with Peter and El and Jones and Diana and June was worth more than knowing Kate was safe and beside him. 

He was wrong about Kate, but he was right about one thing. Neal Caffrey was an asset to the Bureau. He did good work here, every day. And that was something he didn't want to lose. 

He really didn't. 

"Peter...." 

And then the air was full of noise, full of fire. 

The look in Peter's eyes. 

Neal almost couldn't bring himself to turn around. 

His choices... his _life_... all gone up in a terrible ball of fire. 

* * *

No. 

_NO!_

* * *

Grey walls and grey bars had never before seemed so apropos. Neal didn't really have the energy to mind that he was back inside. Kate was gone, for good this time. 

There wasn't really much point in getting out. 

* * *

_KATE!_

* * *

Days went by like breaths underwater. Painful at first, painful enough that he wished for it all to be over already. Then transforming into a floating, hazy numbness that seemed endless and somehow soggy. 

He pretended to be okay, of course. Habit, more than anything. 

* * *

Seeing Peter was like breathing air again. 

Or, it sort of was. He at least remembered what breathing had been like, when Peter came into the room and Neal's back straightened automatically and through long-trained habit, life came back into his eyes and smile, if only a little. 

It hurt, being _here,_ being alive. 

But also, having someone he actually cared about in his space made that bearable, made it okay that he was close to falling apart. 

"How're you holding up?" Peter asked. 

"They don't let me wear ties," Neal answered, certainly not mentioning that he was a little glad, that over the past days spent in prison, if he'd had one, he'd probably have just run it through his fingers over and over again, wondering what he could do to himself with it if he tried. 

He must have succeeded at hiding that dark musing, because when Peter talked about reinstating the anklet situation, he added, "I'd let you wear ties." 

He promised he'd find out who did it, who killed Kate. 

Neal figured that he could keep breathing for a little while, to find that out. 

* * *

He was Neal Caffrey, White Collar consultant. 

He was grinning, confident, a perpetual flirt. 

He was.... 

_clasping his hands together to stop them shaking, losing focus, sliding back to that moment_

He was fine. 

"You holding up?" Peter asked, and he looked worried. 

Neal covered, he persisted... he kept breathing. Kept working. Kept doing what Peter set in front of him to do. 

But it didn't stop people from worrying, didn't stop Mozzie from commenting that he was "spiraling into the dark place." 

And the kicker was, they were right. He was losing it. 

Pulling himself back together wasn't going to be easy. 

If he wanted to get through this alive, if he wanted to feel like he had something in this world worth living for, he needed to con himself. 

He needed to _be_ Peter's Neal Caffrey. 

* * *

First case back. He could do this. 

The case was fun. But the guy they were up against was smart, and they hit a snag, which became a major setback. 

Neal wanted to do something to make Peter proud. Wanted to give him reason to smile again. 

"There's something you should know," he blurted without really knowing where he was going with it. 

Peter turned, focused on him, rather than the case. Neal could work with this. 

_This time, I'll let you change me._

"I didn't want to run anymore," he told his keeper. "You were right, Peter. I have a life here." 

* * *

He was happy, then, in the life he'd engineered for himself, even if he'd needed to leave parts of himself behind. 

Kate had been a part of him. 

He tried to ignore that. Tried to ignore the gaping holes his missing pieces had left. 

But Mozzie kept prodding him. 

Sara brought him the tape. Said he should listen to it. 

* * *

_Peter Burke is here._

_Does this change the plan?_

* * *

Hearing Kate's voice again, well, it shook his grasp on the con a little. He wanted to go back in time, get on the plane with her, explosives be damned. 

When he saw that Fowler had been the one to buy the explosives.... 

It all went up in smoke. Or maybe stuck, in a twisted way. Neal didn't like guns. But Peter carried a gun, would shoot and kill people if he had to. 

And right now, Neal felt like he had to. 

He lined up the bullets to look at them, standing proud and points-up on his dining room table like some kind of very dangerous chess game. 

His queen was gone, and it was his move. 

He didn't have anyone he felt like he could ask about this, with the exception of the inscrutable Bugsy. And Bugsy's wide, liquid eyes seemed to sympathize with him, if nothing else. 

* * *

The reality of pointing a gun at someone in preparation to kill them.... 

Well, it hadn't been something Neal was actually prepared for. 

Fowler wouldn't admit his guilt. 

Neal _wanted_ him dead. But he didn't know if he could do it. 

It was Peter's voice that did him in, the way it kept repeating, urgently, scared. 

"Look at me." 

He was caught between the man he had been and the man he was trying to be, and didn't know which way to turn. 

"Look at me, Neal. This isn't who you are." 

If Peter believed that he wasn't the kind of person who would do this.... 

Then he wouldn't do this. 

He let the gun go, let himself meet Peter's eye. 

Kate was gone. Nothing would change that. 

If he was going to survive, Neal needed to be able to look Peter in the eye. 

* * *

Fowler hadn't done it. 

* * *

(The explosives were Kate's idea. She must have had one _hell_ of a plan.) 

* * *

Fowler was innocent, and the bullets still stood on his table in their angry ranks, ready to go to war. 

No. 

Kate had always hated chess. 

And Neal had almost become someone who both Kate and himself would have hated. 

He dashed the lot of them off the table, and let the world spin drunkenly around him as his life turned itself upside down again. 

* * *

As if that wasn't enough.... 

Someone shot Mozzie. 

With this one he had a choice - go after revenge (and the thought of that made him sick to his stomach right now, as much as he needed it) or stay and make sure Mozzie had someone friendly by his side. 

He could have helped get justice, whatever that meant. But he really wasn't sure right now. And Peter told him to stay with Moz. 

So he stayed. 

* * *

Someone had framed Peter. Masterfully. 

All through trying to get to the bottom of it, trying to stop it, the style of it pricked at the back of his mind. 

He couldn't figure it out until Mozzie showed him the fractal. 

Adler. 

It was Vincent Adler. 

* * *

Peter came to his apartment that night with some wine that disgraced the name of wine and the willingness to put his badge on the table and not pick it up until morning. 

Neal appreciated both of those things, even if he didn't particularly _like_ the prospect of making use of either of them. 

But he started the story, where it would hurt less, with Mozzie. With Mozzie teaching him the fine art of the long con. Meeting Adler. 

Meeting Kate. 

He'd been fascinated. 

She was like a beautiful puzzle. He might have said a tough nut to crack, but he knew, even then, that she wouldn't open up under the sheer force of his charm. 

She needed... delicacy. 

He started with her passion for art, and watched as her smile went from plastic to fascinated. Watched as she got lost in the subject and her smooth movements turned jerky, as if she'd thrown the sheet music out the window and was now playing it by ear. 

He had her attention, now. But he wanted her trust. 

With most people, that would mean more words, softer smiles, confessions of secrets from the past, real or imagined. 

With Kate, he'd started with magic tricks, little deceptions, anything that was a good enough excuse to hold her hands. Because he could tell that was the way to get to her. Had always known her eyes hid more than they revealed. 

Those wide eyes, always the same, like someone had told her over and over not to squint, over and over to look alive, over and over to look them in the eyes. 

He stopped trying to catch her eyes, because her expression didn't show it, but whenever she had to meet someone's eyes, just a shiver or a twitch in her hands betrayed her flinch. 

Waited her out, when it came to Michael. Because she needed to discover for herself that she was just following him because she was used to following. Used to being given direction. 

But that wasn't the story he was meant to be telling Peter. 

This was the story of Adler and how he'd made Neal the man he was today. 

The _specific_ man he was _specifically_ today. The one who could make a mask of himself and be reasonably sure that, whatever happened, he'd make it out the other side intact. 

"My goal at the time was to prove my loyalty to Adler. The job became my life." 

And here he was doing it again. And here he was _telling_ Peter exactly how deep into his long cons he could get. 

Because this con was about honesty. 

A _kind_ of honesty. A kind Kate wouldn't have recognized. 

Wishing yourself into the con so hard that it became real. Pretty much _telling_ Peter that's what he was doing. 

"Trying to make the lie real. But every con has an expiration date." 

Maybe that was true, and maybe it wasn't. 

Maybe if they both hoped very hard, and tried very hard, together the two of them could change Neal into the man Peter wanted him to be. 

* * *

( _And maybe,_ said a treacherous part of his brain, _if you'd been less of a con and more of a man, from the beginning, none of this would ever have been necessary._ ) 

* * *

( _If you'd been the man Peter thinks you are._ ) 

* * *

Because it had started with the music box. 

It had started with Neal trying to con Kate into coming to Copenhagen and helping to steal the damn thing. 

Kate... she was a beautiful and tricky puzzle, and maybe Neal would never know all of her, even now. She was a paradox, and an open book written in layers of code, and so different from anyone else Neal had ever known. 

She didn't like change, but she liked adventure. She liked to eat the same pizza night after night. She liked to know what to expect. But she liked the thrill of standing at the tops of tall towers, she liked to see things no one else had ever seen and do things she'd been told were impossible. 

Neal taught her the art of the con, taught her to play to people's assumptions and expectations, how to feed information directly to a person's subconscious to achieve a certain result. She liked the parts that told her how to act, what to expect. 

She accepted that Neal had lies and secrets that were part of him. She trusted him as long as his hand was in hers. 

But she didn't like to be conned. Didn't like to be manipulated. It reminded her of the way everyday conversations got away from her, sometimes. Of the way she lost the thread and couldn't get it back. 

He regretted, all too often, trying to con her, that fight, going to Copenhagen without her. 

Right now, he wanted nothing more than to become the kind of person who wouldn't have made that mistake. 

* * *

(Later, when he successfully went undercover as Peter, he felt especially pleased with himself.) 


	3. Cracking the Mask

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was all like "oh I'm totally going to be able to get this all into four chapters, I just need to see the end of the series to make sure everything meshes and throw in some enriching details" but then the whole Rebecca arc came along and was so rich in the themes I'm leaning into that it became _really important_ to the story and now I have five chapters oops
> 
> which might become six depending on how watching the rest of season six goes

_You killed Kate._

_No, Neal. **You** did. You changed her. The Kate **I** knew would still be alive._

* * *

_There's nothing sadder than a con man conning himself._

* * *

The fall from grace began slowly. 

But it was always there, from the beginning, just waiting. 

Neal Caffrey had pretty much forgotten that he was playing pretend. Forgot that there was anything more to him than what Peter saw. Because it hurt too much. 

Neal Caffrey was a good FBI consultant, maybe even a good cop, in his way. He had Sara, and his friends. And that was a pretty okay place to be. 

But then Neal started unwittingly hurting Peter, putting Peter in danger, and it all tumbled down from there. 

First, he had to lie about the treasure. Because he wasn't exactly going to rat out Mozzie. But that was okay, for a while. 

Then it turned into breaking into Peter's house. Copying the manifest. Taking the Degas right from under his nose. 

Being the reason Keller kidnapped Elizabeth. 

He worked hard to get things back on level ground, and for a while, he thought he'd succeeded. 

Then the Raphael came back to haunt him. He was on the verge of being arrested when Peter - Peter! - signaled him to run. Peter risked his career to save Neal, to bring him home. And Peter ended up transferred and demoted to evidence grunt. 

Neal could fix this too. But it was starting to feel like a treacherous slope that would eventually drag him down. 

The ground finally gave out under him when the woman who'd practically raised him was shot, and the search for answers about who and why got more and more treacherous until Peter had been run into in his car, and then arrested, charged with murder. 

The con wasn't worth it anymore. It wasn't keeping the pain at bay. 

Because being this person hurt, too. Caring about Peter and seeing him in the hospital after the car crash, caring about Peter and seeing him in prison orange - it was bad. 

* * *

He was in too deep. But he was starting to get that if a life was truly real, it was going to hurt, some of the time. 

Changing who he was to fit the situation was not a permanent solution. 

If he was going to fix things for good, he was going to have to take a different tack. 

* * *

When Neal Caffrey had proposed to Sara Ellis, it had been the truth, the way things were with Neal Caffrey these days. Everything just a little too close to the surface for comfort or safety. Everything just a little too real. 

He'd made Neal Caffrey into a mask, and he'd come far too close to becoming that mask. 

He'd come far too close to losing the parts of himself that had loved Kate the most. 

He'd thought finding his father could help him figure out who he was, but as he sorted through the papers that were the hard-won treasure at the end of this high-flying con, he realized that there were so many different people that he could be, and the one that was most like his father was not the one that he wanted to be, not at all. 

And as much as he cared about Peter, and even, maybe, _loved_ Peter, in some way, he couldn't keep being this open, this honest, the aboveboard person that Peter had been conned into hoping Neal could be. And it was _because_ Neal needed to keep Peter safe and himself that Neal needed to recede a little, and he needed to find that nearly-lost part of himself that had understood Kate, that had understood that secrets weren't always for telling and that worlds could be hidden in silence. 

Elizabeth understood that that was still part of him, had always understood, he thought, and had pushed him this way when she told him to do anything, _anything_ to keep Peter safe. 

Dr. Summers - she'd had her own agenda, of course, but she'd told a truth to Neal that Neal needed to hear. Not that he would always be a criminal, always be no good, those he knew to be false, but it was still true that Neal had left a part of himself behind to work with Peter on the side of the law, and that was a part of himself that would not be denied for much longer. 

And being under Hagen's thumb - 

Oh, God, _Kate._

He was standing right where Kate had stood. In that cornered, impossible place. With the boot of a powerful, unscrupulous man on his neck, threatening the man he wanted to protect the most, forcing the two of them farther and farther apart. 

And maybe that could only end one way. The way Kate had gone. 

The optimistic Neal, Peter's Neal, hoped he could find a way out. 

But the other part of him, the hidden part, started planning. 

* * *

If he wanted to fix things for Peter, once and for all, he would need all of himself. He would need to be more than what Peter expected him to be. 

If he needed to find that hidden part of himself again, he needed to find Kate. Anything that was left of her, everything he could get his hands on. He set about looking for clues all over again, sent Mozzie to place after place, thinking of where he might find Kate's stashes, where there might be anything that he could look at to find anything that was left of _her._

In one of her smaller stashes, Mozzie found something. A colored pencil sketch of Neal, sitting on the terrace at June's, anklet on his crossed leg. Recent. Since the shadows had caught up to her. 

He ran his fingers over the paper, thinking of her, thinking of her hands when she'd drawn this, of her intent eyes watching him as he ate breakfast with Peter, June and Bugsy. Kate had been there in more than spirit. 

And in the stones of the terrace, her color code wove coordinates. A place she'd wanted him to find. 

The place was outside Neal's radius, and so Peter had agreed to take him, as long as anything obviously stolen or otherwise felonious they found there could be brought back and dealt with by the FBI. Neal just hoped to find something more of Kate, something that would bring back a taste of how he'd felt around her. 

What he found was all that, and so much more. 

The canvas he'd imagined when Kate had told him that she didn't know how to paint what was inside her head. 

It was all there. 

Her. 

His trembling fingers longed to touch the canvas, but it was too sacred. The beauty she'd seen in other people's visions. The way they coexisted within her in a strange sort of harmony. 

Her patience. Her precision. Her devotion. 

He'd forgotten. How could he have forgotten? The quality of her silence. The way she'd seen things that other people didn't. 

And in between the sections, a message threaded, pointillist and precise. 

Her signature wasn't in her name in the corner. It was in this. It was in the way she stated plainly, for his eyes only, that this painting was her, that it represented her whole world. 

And all over the canvas was Neal. 

He _ached._

And something broke. 

Peter made some kind of interrogative noise, and it was only then that Neal realized he'd been crying. 

"I told you the bottle meant goodbye. I was wrong. _This_ means goodbye." 

Peter sat there, drawing him out, wanting him to talk, and he did, a little, but mostly he looked at the painting. 

He kept looking at it, in awe, kept finding new things about it to love. Here was their wine bottle, there was his tendency to flee, there was the way she hid behind her beauty. In the upper right was a pigeon, and a man in a cravat, and hands adorned with heavy rings, and that was Mozzie. Mid-left, Raphael and Banksy collided to tell the story of Peter. 

Top center, an image tore through like lightning - a stark, slanted piece of Jean-Dominique Fabry Garat Playing Lyre. 

Neal almost laughed aloud. Adler. 

He wondered if Kate had known, then, that this was all him. That Adler would be the one to do them in. 

He looked at the painting for hours, daring himself to see more and more, to drink in all of her that he could. 

It was the stillest, the quietest he'd been in front of Peter in a long time. Maybe ever. But this night wasn't about Peter. It was about Kate. 

Peter looked at him a little bit differently, from then on. Neal wondered how much of his other self had showed between the cracks, that night in that storage container. 

* * *

Then one day, Jill crashed into their lives. 

So this was the kind of person that had appealed to Peter in his younger days. 

Jill was an open book, about the things she felt and the things she thought and the things she wanted. Even if they were things she knew Peter wouldn't approve of. She was reckless in the extreme and not afraid to throw Peter for a loop. 

But then Neal already knew that people who were afraid to throw Peter for a loop weren't the kind of people that Peter wanted around. 

(It didn't seem fair - Kate had been trained and conditioned to be what people expected her to be, to keep from rocking the boat.) 

* * *

And Neal found himself commiserating with Elizabeth about Peter shutting them out of the case, out of the Peter-and-Jill team, and chatting about Jill, what Peter was to her, what she wanted. 

"Peter could be the last man she ever loved," Elizabeth said. 

"Twenty years is a long time to go without loving someone else." 

El looked at Neal. "You fall in love with Peter," she told him, "you... you are _in love._ I can't imagine those feelings ever going away. Not completely." 

"Really?" Neal made a joke out of it, as the situation seemed to demand. "Peter Burke? The man in the conference room?" 

"You have no idea," Elizabeth said, looking through the glass, love in her eyes. 

Neal thought about it. 

Peter was, in the presence of those he cared about, the very opposite of smooth. Peter could look at a puzzle sideways and figure out exactly what everyone else was missing. Peter liked home, comfort, routine between exhilarating adventures, and every day he spoke to his wife with a code word that had come to mean "I love you" more strongly, perhaps, than the original. 

Neal thought he could guess how it would be to fall for someone like that. And stay fallen. 

* * *

(And the ache that came when he thought of Kate, every time, was becoming sweeter, more welcome.) 

* * *

As much as Neal understood loving Peter, it was time to come out from under his shadow. Go his own way. 

It was okay to be Kate's Neal. 

Neal had thought... for a long time, he'd thought... that Peter's Neal was the good guy. The guy he _should_ be, the guy he maybe would have been if his childhood hadn't been quite so screwed up. 

Kate's Neal was a little bit broken. 

But it was a lot more complicated than that. 

Peter enjoyed chasing Neal. It was almost a game, to him. Peter had always been torn between wishing Neal would go straight and be happy, and liking him the way he was, the way he presented himself. 

(Peter liked Jill the way she was, after all. Even if he disapproved.) 

Peter's Neal was mischievous and irrepressible because Peter really would miss that about him, if he left. 

Sara had also liked the con, despite herself, needed more excitement and danger in her life than Kate's Neal, the real Neal, could give her. 

Some part of Neal had sensed that, in both of them, and complied. 

And Neal was tired. 

Tired of playing the part of the joyful and irrepressible Neal Caffrey with everything he had. 

He was ready for it to end. 

* * *

It wasn't over. It wasn't going to be simple to stop. 

His mask was cracked now, but it was still part of him, alive and strong, with his own preferences and desires. And that part of him wanted something real with Rebecca. 

He reminded himself that it was a mask by pushing the idea that he wanted something with her that was like what Peter and El had. This was for their benefit. If he took their advice, tried to make the two of them something that Peter would approve of, then.... 

Then it would still all be a lie. He liked her, yes, was attracted to her, wanted the best for her, but he didn't need her, not like he'd needed Kate. 

Was that a lie of omission? 

Even if he needed this life, needed this relationship with Peter, as much as he needed to remember that it wasn't all he was? 

He was in a strange sort of limbo, trying to figure out this puzzle. Trying to figure out which of his selves he should be listening to on this. 

He tried to talk to June about it, without giving too much away. Asked her about Byron, and how it had been when he'd confessed to being a criminal. 

"You can't separate what you are and who you are," she told him. 

"I wish I could," he told her. 

* * *

(But that was because who he was, right now, was Peter Burke's Neal Caffrey, and what he was, forever and ever, was Kate's.) 

* * *

He wasn't hers. 

He was dangerous for Rebecca. She was too naive, too intrigued by his mischief, and either the law or the underworld would catch up to her in the end. 

He didn't want to hurt her. But he was going to. One side of his life or the other was going to end up crushing her spirit. 

* * *

(The same was true of Peter.) 

* * *

(As it turned out, Peter got crushed under the wheels of the con first.) 

* * *

The look on Peter's face when Neal confessed to being involved in bribing the federal prosecutor.... 

He'd thought of Peter Burke as untouchable, as superhuman. He could be conned about other people, but Peter would always know himself. Peter would always be driven by justice. Would always know what direction he needed to go to get it. 

This was crushing that fundamental part of Peter. 

And it was pushing the two of them apart, widening the cracks in Neal's mask. This thing Neal had done to save Peter... because he couldn't bear to see Peter in prison orange anymore... was doing something to him that was, maybe, worse. 

"I know why," Peter told him. 

Neal nodded. "To help my friend." 

"And because you're a criminal," Peter told him, "and you can't help yourself. Shame on me for expecting anything else." 

...Neal didn't know what to say to that. 

"Things are gonna change," Peter said. "For the both of us." 

"Yeah," Neal agreed, walking away. "It's time they did." 

He couldn't do this anymore. Couldn't pretend to be what he wasn't. 

This mask, this illusion he'd sold Peter? It had outlived its usefulness. 

But he was afraid that getting rid of it was going to mean tearing himself apart. 

* * *

Hagen had Rebecca. 

Bound and gagged. 

His schemes had gone too far. His lies, his games, they'd landed everyone here. 

All he'd ever wanted was to keep himself and his own safe and happy, and look what it had gotten him. Backed into this corner. 

It was crushing Peter. 

It was crushing Rebecca. 

He couldn't fix any of this if he was still limiting himself. 

It was time to take off the mask, no matter the cost. 

* * *

(If he was even still capable of that.) 

* * *

(He'd have to be.) 

* * *

The mask hardened, cracked open further. 

The boyish Neal Caffrey was falling away, piece by piece. And someone else was stepping up. 

Not limited to who he'd been when he'd been with Kate. 

Not limited at all. 

He knew a lot more now, more than he wanted to know, in some ways. He knew how far he'd go for vengeance, if he felt like he had to. 

And he really didn't want to go there again. 

His voice was dark and dangerous when he told Hagen, "If anything happens to her, or him," Neal nodded to Moz, "You'll see what I'm capable of." 

He was capable of things he really wished he wasn't. Peter was part of him. James was part of him, too. Neal wasn't going to deny any of that anymore. 

Not if he could use it. 

* * *

Joking with Peter at the auction house was a reflex, but it went down like a lead balloon, and Neal left it there, today. Today, he was other things than Peter's Neal Caffrey. 

He didn't hide that he was impatient, edgy, that he had other things going on in his life right now than the latest forgery case, things that were more important to him. 

Peter commented. Neal didn't deny, deflect, any of the usual avenues. He misled - he couldn't afford to put Rebecca in danger by telling the truth - but he didn't lie with his face and his mood and his charm. 

It was a new look for him. 

And Neal couldn't pretend to believe in the system, not today. So he argued with Peter over the bribe. 

Contrary to Peterly belief (and that was definitely Neal's fault) Neal did know the difference between catharsis and justice. None of this had been done to make Neal feel better, and it didn't. But there was a warrant out for James's arrest and Peter was where he was meant to be, where he could help people the most. Part of the system he loved. 

Peter wasn't stupid. But he did have a blind spot when it came to justice that wasn't arrived at through official channels. 

But it was so easy to game the system, so easy to cheat it. As much as Peter's Neal had wanted to believe in that system, the way Peter did, that was an impossible goal. And this Neal would never deny that. 

* * *

He spied on Peter and the FBI without hesitation. 

* * *

_Don't volunteer to take him on. Trust me. You'll regret it._

* * *

The blow hurt, but he wasn't unprepared. 

Knowing that the people he loved were safe was worth doing things that would hurt them, that would lower their opinions of him. 

Neal would do anything. 

He'd twisted the justice system into a pretzel, for Peter. He had to save Rebecca. Even if it meant destroying something she'd built her life around. 

Even if it meant destroying the Codex. 

He knew what he had to do. 

* * *

He destroyed something unique, something priceless. 

* * *

( _I would **never** burn that art!_ ) 

* * *

Rebecca was safe. 

* * *

Peter was safe. 

* * *

That was all that mattered. 


	4. Folding Away the Mask

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Incredibly even to myself, I set up this whole 'verse before knowing any of the events covered in this chapter!
> 
> Lots of dialogue from the episodes because there was so much I found I wanted to factor in.
> 
> Soon there will be a joyful final chapter! And also several short sequels! _oops!_

Whoever lived in this apartment had most likely killed Siegel, and probably Hagen. Although Neal didn't have it in him right now to pretend he cared more than a little bit that Hagen was dead. 

...Whoever lived in this apartment had been stalking him. 

...And Peter. The team. 

Siegel. 

Elizabeth. 

...Whoever lived in this apartment was _going down._

But there was something wrong about all this... wrong beyond the files and Siegel and Hagen. Neal wasn't sure what could be more off than so much obsession, stalking, murder. 

Until he saw the mirror. 

Until he saw the grate. 

* * *

It was all her. 

* * *

(He'd started to fall in _love_ with this woman.) 

* * *

(Or, at least, _part_ of him had.) 

* * *

_Tell me everything,_ Peter demanded, and the most difficult thing about that was that it was Neal Caffrey he was asking, and Neal Caffrey whose heart had been broken. 

And Neal Caffrey he had to ask to keep pretending everything was normal. 

* * *

Mozzie philosophized about fake gemstones and quoted Oscar Wilde. "A woman's face is her work of fiction." 

The problem with that was, so was the current incarnation of Neal Caffrey. 

Was Neal Caffrey any more real than Rebecca Lowe? 

God, being Neal Caffrey sure _felt_ real enough. 

"The truth is," Neal said, "I was excited about someone for the first time in a while." 

"I know you cared about her," Moz sympathized. 

Neal shook his head. "I cared about the person she pretended to be." 

If Rebecca Lowe was as real as Neal Caffrey, then how was he any better than her? 

"If only it were that easy," Mozzie said. 

"It has to be," Neal replied. _It has to be._

_Because I have to go out there and be the Neal Caffrey she fell in love with, and if I hate who I am, I won't be able to pull it off._

He needed to be Neal Caffrey, but his mask was cracked beyond repair, now, crumbling and creaking under the stress. 

* * *

He used all the tricks he knew. 

The compliments he bestowed on her that day felt like Jasmine pretending to be in love with Jafar. Truths hiding lies. 

_Just admiring you. It's impressive how well you've handled everything._

Except he felt sick, because she'd actually managed to cast the spell on him. She'd actually managed to make him fall for her. 

He turned that sickness into concern for her. About the kidnapping. 

"I can't let that happen again." 

"This can't be halfway," she replied. "We can't be halfway." 

Neal wanted to laugh aloud. The people they were pretending to be? There wasn't anyplace closer than halfway. 

"If I'm going to be in your life," she continued, "it has to include this part of it." 

The criminal. The con man. Neal Caffrey. The part he was getting ready to leave behind. 

"Maybe it's time I step away from that part of my life," he told her with perfect honesty. 

She laughed. 

"What?" he asked. 

"Come on, you don't actually think you could do that." 

He had to keep her away from the gem, away from Mozzie, for as long as possible. He needed to be honest, _real._ And this was something the mask didn't cover. So he dug up Kate's Neal, although it hurt, hurt a lot, to use that part of himself for this. 

"If it came to that," he told her, imagining Kate, "to us - yeah, I could." 

He poured _everything_ into stalling her, because Peter's life was on the line. 

"I think I'm falling in love with you." 

And that was Neal Caffrey. Everything he had left. He was wrung dry. 

* * *

It was worth it. They had surveillance on her apartment, and she was none the wiser. 

But something was off. 

She called him, said she loved him too, and he couldn't believe it, because he was already standing on the brink of destruction. But part of him knew _she_ believed it. 

She fell for it. She fell for it all the way. 

_Fell for her own con._

Neal Caffrey wasn't any more real than Rebecca Lowe. 

* * *

"You think I deserve this, don't you?" he asked Peter. 

He should have predicted Peter's answer. "No one deserves this." 

Which didn't tell him anything, really, about what Peter thought of him, about what it was about him that had attracted _her._

He should have seen her coming. He was always on the lookout. Always ahead of the game, or so he thought. 

"Look how far it's gotten me," he said to Peter in frustration. 

"Maybe there's a lesson to be learned in that," Peter replied, looking at him thoughtfully. 

Neal realized something, then. 

Peter liked Neal Caffrey, liked the troublemaker and the irrepressible flirt, despite himself, but seeing how much this had hurt Neal... this wasn't something Peter liked. 

Peter would genuinely like to see Neal change, now, to see Neal become someone else, someone more stable, someone less prone to hurt. 

He was allowed to be something other than Peter's old Neal Caffrey. But he needed to focus. Needed to decide who he wanted to be. 

He'd used every part of himself, and things had gone spectacularly awry. Maybe there were some parts of himself he could stand to prune off, leave behind. 

Or, maybe not cut them off entirely. Planning to ignore or destroy a facet of himself had never quite worked for him. But he could tuck them in, fold them away, until a wide piece of paper had become a small paper crane. 

Until all that was left of the shape of him was a wish. 

A wish that he could find a way to be satisfied with whatever life sent his way next. 

* * *

"We could have had everything," Rebecca/Rachel told him. 

"It wouldn't have been real." 

"You're a con man. You could have convinced yourself." 

_I almost did,_ he didn't tell her. _But not for you._

It was tempting for someone with so many faces, so many masks. To escape into one of them. To hide from parts of yourself. 

How could he explain this to her? 

"You're always running from one identity to the next because you can't face the truth." 

"What's that?" she asked. 

"That you hate who you really are - and I can see why." He'd hated the part of himself that could hold a gun to Fowler and nearly pull the trigger on an innocent man. 

He really wanted her to be able to change. She had something in her that was worth preserving. But they weren't each other's. That had never been the truth. 

_People can change,_ he tried to tell her. _Just... not like that._

* * *

Peter was angry. 

"I gave you strict instructions not to bait her." 

He couldn't pretend today. Neal Caffrey was dried out and more than half gone. He'd used up that life getting to this point. There was not enough of Peter's Neal Caffrey to make this into a joke. 

So he just said, "It worked, didn't it?" Hard and cold. 

And he couldn't lie to Peter about the fact that he was tired of this, tired of being what the Bureau needed, someone always in the mindset of the criminal, always thinking of how he would pull the latest con. 

He wanted his freedom. 

Freedom to not have to think of everything as a con. 

* * *

There was always another case, though. Another person to save. 

This one meant conning Rachel. 

She was still trying to get him to come with her. He tried to explain why that would never work. 

"When I first met you, what I saw was the innocence of Kate, the wit of Sara, the allure of Alex." 

"Exactly," she concluded. "I'm the perfect woman for you." 

Somewhere deep inside, Neal wanted to punch her in the face for that. 

_No, because the innocence of Kate is a lack of everything you are. The innocence of Kate is having no idea what you do to me unless I tell you outright. The innocence of Kate is believing me, and when you don't believe, trusting me._

_Oh god, Kate._

"Lovers are experts at sniffing out one another's deceptions," Rachel said, like a challenge. 

_No,_ Neal thought. _No they aren't. They go for years not seeing the obvious because they don't want to. They respect each other's privacy, their secrets. You've never had love. Not like that. Not like Kate. Not like innocence._

Innocence wasn't about not knowing. It was about not _needing_ to know. 

He'd trusted Kate. He still did. When everyone else had been telling him that she didn't care, that she was lying to him, that she was leading him down the wrong path. 

He'd been innocent for her. 

He wanted to be that person again. 

* * *

(Peter still doubted him when he said he could go straight.) 

* * *

(He could.) 

* * *

(He _could._ ) 

* * *

Being surrounded by bricks and earth on all sides was oddly reassuring. 

But if he didn't find the diamond, get it to Rebecca/Rachel, Mozzie could die. 

(He'd told Peter the con wasn't about the money, and after a certain point, it wasn't. It was always about people. That had been truth. Sometimes it was about providing for Kate. Sometimes it was about finding Kate. And he never, never went into a con with the intention of leaving the world, and people, worse off than he'd found them.) 

He smashed through the brick wall to get to the diamond, and thought about Kate, about Moz. No matter his intentions, he kept getting into these situations where no one else cared how many bricks they had to bash through to get to the payoff. 

He had to fix this. 

* * *

Moz was okay. Diana and the others had saved him. 

Now the only person that needed saving was Rebecca. 

Rebecca... Rachel... she'd bought into not just her own con, but the con that was Neal Caffrey. The man who flirted with and fell for any sweet girl who stuck around long enough. The man who'd do anything for a pair of big, blue, sparkling eyes. 

Neal just wanted his brick wall back. Kate's hand in his, her solidity, one more time, one last magic trick. 

One last vanishing act. 

"You won't leave without the diamond." 

The dawning horror on Rachel's face as she reached into her pocket for the little bag was satisfying. But he grinned because he knew what he was going to say, when she found that the big blue diamond eye of the idol she'd come so close to had disappeared. That she'd never really had it. 

"Nothing says 'I love you' like a brick." 

He'd been thrown off by his feelings for her, by loving a part of her that was so very different than the whole of her. 

But she'd never had him. Not the real him. The part of him that would always be Kate's was shining through the cracks now, letting them both know that their game was over. 

Neither of the people they'd fallen for was real, or at least not the whole truth. 

They'd conned each other. 

"Sometimes you have to stop running," he told her. A part of him truly hoped she could. 

He knew he wanted to stop. 

He knew he wanted a life - not a _normal_ life, but a steady life. A solid life. A life that, just maybe, had more structure than sparkle. 

The dreams that he and Kate had had, they might have been extravagant in some ways, but they'd always centered around familiarity, routine. 

For the first time, it felt like it was in reach, even though Kate was gone. For the first time he realized that Peter Burke's version of Neal Caffrey may have wanted more than anything to go straight, to earn his freedom, but Kate's Neal.... 

Kate's Neal was the man who could actually be happy living that life, once he got it. 

* * *

(And he _was_ going to get it.) 

* * *

(One way or another.) 

* * *

"I'm done, Moz," he told his friend. "I'm giving up the life." 

Mozzie argued, of course. 

"Neal," he asked finally, "if you're not a criminal, then what are you?" 

As if this was a question Neal had never considered. 

"That's what I wanna find out." 

Moz refused to believe that a life without crime was something Neal could even remotely enjoy. 

It was the first time he'd seen how much of himself he hid from Mozzie, how even his closest friends saw what they wanted to see, because Neal reflected that back almost instinctively. 

"...A future lacking in the finer things," Moz was saying. "For you, that's like cutting off your oxygen." 

Neal remembered those days in prison after Kate had died and he knew million-dollar views and silk ties didn't even touch the list of things he needed in order to breathe. 

This was what he breathed: 

Kate. Peter. Mozzie. Elizabeth. Knowing that they were safe. Alive. Free. 

* * *

(But it was true that Paris, without money, wouldn't be the same.) 

* * *

The problem with Peter was that he trusted people. And people let him down. 

It was admirable. It was sweet. It made him an easy mark. 

Neal had conned him enough times, had seen the FBI con him enough times, that he should have seen this coming. 

Peter's Neal would have waited it out, would have trusted Peter to come through for him. But the person he was becoming was less soft, less compromising. 

When Neal asked for his deal in writing, he was showing Peter how tired he was, how he was folding down to hard lines, to needs and demands. 

It was hard to disappoint Peter, but it was all only the truth. 

* * *

They took Rachel/Rebecca away again, after Neal was safely home, but they got a chance to talk one last time. 

"You okay?" Peter asked him. 

It said something about the life of Neal Caffrey that he wasn't sure whether Peter was referring to the kidnapping (which was a lot more common than he would have liked) or the traumatic nature of his love life recently (which was, again, troublingly common). 

"Yeah..." Neal replied. "No." 

He told Peter he couldn't help seeing Rebecca, instead of Rachel. 

"Good," said Peter. "Just remember her that way." 

Memories left behind. 

"'Before the end,'" Neal realized. "She was saying goodbye." 

He ran, but he was too late. 

He knew her, he realized. He really wished he didn't. But he knew both of them. Rebecca. Rachel. 

And there was something there that he would miss. 

He reached out, closing her eyes. People like her... people like Neal... they needed freedom to survive. 

Maybe this really could only end one way. 

_Peter Burke's Neal Caffrey is a story. Every story ends. Every con has a time limit. There's only one way this story ends... the story I've been building for these people. For Peter. For Mozzie. Elizabeth. Alex. Show them the slick con man and they expect you to be this person forever._

These people trusted Neal Caffrey to be Neal Caffrey. 

He'd tried to believe there was another way. He always did. 

But he couldn't find a way out of this one. 

Not as Neal Caffrey. 

* * *

_Is your freedom worth dying for?_

_It might be._

* * *

(But there's always another way.) 

* * *

He folded himself down to one last wish, because freedom was the only way he could live as who he wanted to be. 

He threw his fate in the ring with the takedown of the Pink Panthers, and did everything possible to make it happen. 

Keller... Keller made everything more complicated. Made his path to the finish line a winding one, a path on which people got hurt. 

Amy's spirit was crushed, her trust in people destroyed. 

A man he didn't like very much, but still, a man, got shot in the heart in front of him, and another was left dead in a dumpster. 

Everything for one last wish didn't work so well either. He couldn't be the man he wanted to be if he let these things happen. 

And they would keep happening, as long as he and Keller were both alive and working against the Pink Panthers. 

"I never wanted to be this guy, Moz," he said. 

He had to keep caring about people. That was what defined him, made him different than the criminals he now worked to stop. 

Keller tried to convince him that there was no difference, that there was no such thing as a happy ending for someone who could do the things that Neal Caffrey could do. 

He was wrong about that, but he was right about one thing. 

_We take down Woodford and his crew, it's never over. Even in prison they'll come looking for us. And their reach, my friend, it is far, and it is wide. And the Panthers, Neal, they don't stop looking for rats until they're dead. Until then, guess who they go after. People closest to you. And they make it hurt, Caffrey. They make it hurt so bad that you'll wish that they found you. So you enjoy this freedom you're working so hard to get. Because when you're footloose and fancy free, those people that you love so much... they're on death row._

There was no happy ending for Neal Caffrey. 

* * *

So he'd have to become someone else. 

* * *

Neal heard it over and over again. People don't change. 

But Neal changed all the time. There were ways in which he couldn't, but the question always in the back of his mind was whether he should. 

Something needed to change. He'd folded in so many parts of himself and he'd become too narrow, too focused. 

but maybe all this little paper crane had to do now was spread his wings and take a leap. 

One last leap. 

* * *

He was going to fold away everything as neat as he could, leave things in their right order. Peter at white collar, El by his side, Mozzie... doing what he did. Playing parcheesi and drinking with June. 

He tried not to tip them off by saying goodbye too obviously. But he said it in every way he thought he could get away with. 

_This has been more fun than a prison sentence has any right to be._

A kiss on the forehead when he thought he could get away with it. 

It was the only way he could make peace with what he needed to do. He needed to let go of this life. 

He could do this. Give Peter what he wanted, and also what would break him. But in a better way, this time, he hoped. 

Give Peter one last glimpse of his impulsive, daredevil Neal Caffrey. A glimpse of the way Neal could throw himself into things with passion, give up so much in the name of protecting his friends. 

His family. 

He put a fond hand on the doorframe as June left the apartment. He would miss these walls. 

But he had one last flight to catch. So he spread his paper wings. 

He looked around the shipping container one last time. 

This was it. It was all here. Neal Caffrey. 

And here it would stay. 

* * *

(And the key went in his pocket. Just waiting to be found.) 

* * *

(Because Neal Caffrey... he belonged to Peter.) 

* * *

It was almost funny, he thought, the symmetry here to when Kate had gone forever. He didn't want to do that to anyone. But lives like Neal Caffrey's, they could only end one way. 

So he put on his pilot's uniform, and walked out onto the tarmac. 


	5. Living Unmasked

He opened his wings one final time, hoping they'd be wide enough to shield everyone he loved from the fallout of this last, desperate flight. To the music of the New York sirens wailing louder and louder, he said goodbye, and he took the pill. 

As the ambulance door closed, he felt himself drifting, and wondered if he'd wake up. 

* * *

(And he wondered _who_ would wake up.) 

* * *

Neal/Danny/George/Nick/Steve/Gary/Ben/Chris/Len/James/Frank/Nathaniel/Victor//// / / 

The funny thing about being the people he was, was that when his life flashed before his eyes, all of them did. Like pages flipping in a yearbook, or more likely a photographic lineup. 

* * *

When he woke up, he was alone. 

Neal Caffrey was dead. Vic Moreau wondered whether it was more like the way Teddy Winters was dead, or the way Kate Moreau was dead. He didn't feel particularly like he was still alive. 

The difference, he supposed, was one of permanence. He'd have to wait and see. See if Vic had as much life left somewhere in him as Mozzie did. 

If he had a life, it wasn't here. 

He left behind everything that anyone knew about, with the exception of Vic's papers - Neal Caffrey had to appear to have died, unexpectedly, suddenly, in the middle of the job. In the middle of his life. What wasn't in his apartment, or on his desk at white collar, was in that shipping container. 

But there was one thing, something that wouldn't fit in a pocket, that he couldn't leave behind. Kate. Her painting. Everything that it was. 

* * *

There was something new in the shipping container. A small wooden crate. 

The code almost wasn't visible. Could have been mistaken for accidental smudges on the stretched edges of the canvas. But it was there. 

And he knew to look for it because of what the painting showed. This one wasn't signed, but he knew Kate's original work. 

It showed, with an almost photographic clarity, the hat he'd bought, and then lost, in Cape Verde. Every stitch, every scuff it had acquired in their adventures there. Bright morning light slanted across it from a window. She had to have seen it. Had to have held it in her hands. 

Had to have been alive a year and change after he'd mourned her death. 

Kate was alive. 

Kate had survived the explosion. 

This revelation... it would have broken Neal Caffrey, to know that the woman he'd loved, the woman he'd mourned, had been alive all this time, while he'd ached and burned and compromised himself for revenge and tried his damnedest to move on. 

But Vic Moreau was focused, he was shaped. He was a powerful and streamlined vehicle for _hope._

He felt like he'd broken the surface of the water he'd been drowning in. He felt victorious. He felt _free._

He decoded the colors, brain working like lightning, with a joy he hadn't truly felt in some time. 

There was a number, and a word. 

8965 orchard. 

An address, maybe, with no town, not even a state attached to it. 

It took some digging, but after a while, he thought he'd found the place he was meant to be looking for. A group home for autistic adults in a tiny coastal town in North Carolina. 

One of the residents was named Georgia Caffrey. 

The man with Victor Moreau on all of his paperwork gave a joyful, almost hysterical laugh. 

It had to be his Kate. 

Georgia. It suited her. And it was a clue, the first name of one of the most famous female painters in the world, and a version of his own middle name. 

It was as if she'd wrapped herself up in him to keep herself safe. 

Vic made plans to start driving south. 

* * *

It was a big, beautiful old house, well-maintained, probably at least partially due to the large amount of money "Georgia" and her "parents" had contributed when she'd applied to live here. Even if her presence here was something of a con, she'd more than paid it back by raising the standard of living for the whole home. 

But, he realized, he really didn't know how much of a con it was. Just because Kate had been able to move through mainstream society without attracting much notice, didn't mean she _liked_ living in it. 

He knocked on the door. 

"Hello?" said the woman who answered, slightly doubtfully. 

"Hi, I'm Victor Moreau," he introduced himself. "I'm a friend of Georgia Caffrey. Is there any chance I could come in?" 

"Lily Rogers, I'm on call today," the woman replied. "Georgia? She's not expecting any visitors." But she stepped aside in the face of Vic's pleading look. 

"I know," he said. "I haven't seen her in a long time. I'm not even sure if she knows I'm still alive." He took in the room purely out of habit, the desk installed by the grand staircase of the entrance hall, the quiet but inhabited noise of the place and the smell of paint and clay. His confidence that Kate was alive and _here_ grew, but his nervousness and urgency along with it. 

"I'm so sorry I haven't visited earlier," he told Lily, who was now behind the desk. He couldn't keep the desperation out of his tone, so he didn't even try, set his sights on playing into it. On folding the truth into a lie that would get him through the door. "I spent some time in prison, and when I got out, nobody would tell me where she was. Her family doesn't like me much. I only just tracked her down. I need to see her." 

Lily eyed him, then looked at her records. "Well, _they_ haven't come to visit her," she said with a sigh. "She's made friends, she's happy here, but... being cut off completely like this? She should've had contact with familiar people." She frowned. "If you'd called ahead, we could have asked her if she wanted visitors." 

"I'm sorry, I didn't even think," he said. "You could ask her now, right?" 

"She's in the art room." The woman stood. "I'll ask. You? Stay here." She eyed him as if she knew his type. 

"Thank you, Lily," he said, putting all of himself into that gratitude. 

A minute later, he heard a soft cry of surprise and joy, and when Lily came back, she looked much friendlier towards him. She led him deeper into the house. 

The art room was a sunny, open space that might have once been a parlor or breakfast room. Now there were several workspaces, including a drafting table, a corner for ceramics, a space set up for acrylic paints and another for drawing. At the moment there were three people in the room. 

At the drawing table sat a woman, both familiar and not. 

No one who'd seen the public face of Kate Moreau would have recognized her, not at a casual glance. She'd cut her hair to just above her shoulders, and it fell in graceful layers, just a little wave to it. She'd talked about that, before, had wanted to cut it, but her mother had always told her that good hair and makeup covered a multitude of sins. And once she'd begun to learn the art of the con, Mozzie's advice had been to keep things simple until you had reason to make a change - hair was always easier to cut on short notice than anything else. 

(He'd always hated the resentment in Kate's voice when she quoted that particular chestnut of her mother's - it was true, as far as it went, but pre-con Kate, as far as he was concerned, had had no sins to cover.) 

She wore no makeup now, and she sat curled in a chair like a cat, colored pencils arrayed around her. Her hands had stilled when he came into view, but she wasn't tense. She wore a tiny, crooked smile, and just looked at him, at his clothes, at his hands, anywhere but his eyes. 

It was like their quiet afternoons together. She was herself, unvarnished. Neal understood that her presence here was the kind of con that wasn't a con. She was comfortable here. 

He approached slowly, full of awe. "You're the most beautiful sight I've seen in my life," he told her with perfect honesty. "I didn't think I'd ever see you again." He just barely remembered not to call her Kate, to do what he had to do to preserve her cover here. It seemed important. And Lily was watching - surreptitiously, giving them the illusion of privacy, but he understood her need to be protective of Kate. The real Kate. 

"Georgie," he said, beaming at her as he settled in a chair across the corner of the table from her. "It's me. Vicky. Vic Moreau. You remember me?" 

The corners of her mouth crawled up and she gave him an acknowledging breath of laughter. She reached out a hand towards him, and he offered both his hands up to her. She let herself touch them all over, as if she were seeing them with her fingers as well as her eyes. 

To him, this was their private thing, and it felt strange, with all these eyes on them. But it let Neal know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that she wanted to be here. That this was no mere stopgap or safehouse, even if at first that's all it had been meant to be. 

"Vic Moreau," she said as if tasting that, as if drinking him in with all of her senses at once. "Of course. I took one of your pieces. I was afraid you'd mind. But it was a fair trade?" 

"You can have anything of mine you want," Neal told her. "You offered me everything you are. That's more than a fair trade." 

Her fingers curled into his, and he clasped her hands tightly. 

"You taught me how to show it," she told him. 

"I've missed you," he told her. "So much." 

"I'm sorry," she replied. 

He lowered his voice, because some things had to be said outright. "Why now?" he asked her. "If you've been keeping tabs on me... why not after Adler was killed?" 

"Keller was there too," she told him. "He was part of the whole thing. And he was like a bad penny. Even after he was taken to Russia, I didn't trust that he wouldn't somehow come after me again. I had to stay dead." 

"Even to me?" Did she not trust him to keep her secret? 

"Even to you," she said. "But that was for you. If you were the only person who knew, there was no way you could have moved on, lived your life in New York." 

"Kate," he whispered. "That's... I never really moved on. I did some things I wasn't proud of because I thought you were dead. I'm not blaming you, I just... I think I would have been a lot happier knowing you were out there somewhere." 

"Still, I didn't want to be the reason you ran. And I was... okay, here. You know New York is too much for me sometimes. Your Peter, he gives you something I can't. You had a life I couldn't be part of. If there had been an easy fix... if you were let out, I would have told you. You could have had both lives. But while you had the anklet, and you had Peter? I didn't want to take that away." 

Neal took an unsteady breath. "I... Peter's not _you,_ Kate. I needed _you._ " 

"If you'd come to the plane, we could have both run. But you stopped. Because you needed him, too." 

Neal shook his head. "I'm so sorry. I was confused. I got kind of... lost in the role. But I only put on that mask so that I could con Peter into helping me find you." 

Kate smiled sadly. "There's always part of you in the mask. There's always a part of you that wants to explore any new avenue you come across. I'm always going to want to stay with the things I know. The classics. But I don't want to limit you to that. Because you love new things. New people." 

"Is that what happened after Copenhagen, with Alex?" His heart hurt to think of that. "You thought you'd take yourself out of my life to make room for someone else? Because that's never going to work for me. Tell me you know that now." 

"Okay," said Kate. "Okay. I know now I want to hang onto you as long as I can. When I saw the obituary, I wondered if I'd missed my chance. I realized I didn't want to miss you anymore. So I sent the message. But anyway, you're here. So it's good." 

"You figured out I'd faked my death?" 

"I hoped." She rubbed at his knuckles, pulling his hands in a little closer to her body. "You are good at it." 

"I have kind of perfected the art." He leaned towards her, smirking a little. "You know, we faked Mozzie's death, too. So now we've got the full trifecta. He finally found a use for those teeth he pulled. Never thought I'd see the day." 

She laughed, loud and strident. 

"You really like it here, huh, Georgie?" he said with a little sadness in his voice. 

She leaned towards him. "This is the easiest con I ever pulled," she whispered. "It's been a second home. But now that you're here, I just want to go find the next adventure." 

"Oh, I missed you." 

With her, he felt light. He felt free. He felt... innocent. 

* * *

Now that they'd found each other again, now that they were safe, they didn't want to be apart. 

She couldn't just up and leave, though, not without it being suspicious. And although Neal would have, Vic had no pressing need to be alone with Kate. So they stayed there, in the art room, for a long while, just soaking in the reality of each other's presence after so long. 

She had a friend who came over to watch her draw and didn't say one word, but his eyes followed her fingers. Kate chatted with him intermittently, unperturbed by his silence. 

Vic was happy to just listen, too. 

* * *

Victor Moreau bought a place in North Carolina (in Elizabeth City, right off Hughes Boulevard, and he laughed about it maybe more than was dignified), got a job with a small firm of private investigators and immediately began making himself useful. 

He'd told the firm that he specialized in the recovery and authentication of art and gemstones, but soon they found themselves bringing him in on almost every case. 

He'd learned a lot, over the years. Not just about warrant law. About how to do good, from either side of the law. About how to take pleasure in the mundane. About how good he had it, when he had a home and a purpose. 

And he had a home, with Kate. Just lying in bed together, arms around her, was better then he remembered, or maybe better than it had ever been. She was so relaxed, her eyes half shut. 

But he and Kate had many adventures still, some of them cases, some of them not. And when Vic felt like he was getting lost in the con, flying too close to the sun, Kate helped ground him, helped pull him away, pull him home. 

They came back to visit her friends in the home, in between adventures, when they could. She always wore one of her covers in public, but this house wasn't public, not anymore. 

His favorite thing about the place was how easily she laughed here. 

Her laugh wasn't musical. It was awkward and jarring and without self-awareness. Vic always loved being able to draw it out of her. Her friends were wonderful too, and Victor spent hours with them, sometimes, comparing art techniques, helping select supplies, even stretching canvas. And there was nothing of the con about any of them, not even the little bit that everyone out on the street had, covering their oddities. They laughed when they were delighted, grunted when they were grumpy, ignored you when they found their own business more interesting. 

Here, they were both free to stop pretending entirely, and show off their odd-shaped pieces, their obsessions, their delights, their tics and their traumas. No one here would judge. 

But Kate was the most important piece. She was home. Whether they were alone, or with her friends, or on an adventure, she was there. She loved him. 

It didn't matter how many masks he wore or how many games he played. 

She'd take him. Because she knew the masks didn't matter. Not as long as his hand wound up in hers at the end of the day. 

And as long as that happened, Vic Moreau was content. 

* * *

(But still, there were things in New York he would miss.) 

* * *

(Very much.) 

* * *

Moz followed the activity of Victor Moreau, of course, and found the two of them soon enough. Chewed them both out for letting him believe that they were dead. Laid some extra groundwork for Georgia's background. And it was good to have him around again. 

But when Mozzie went back to New York, he made a point to have a chat with Peter. And he reported back that Peter hadn't found Vic's clues, still thought he'd died of a gunshot wound in that ambulance. 

"Leave a bottle of Bordeaux on his stoop for me," Vic told Moz. "He'll figure it out from there." 

* * *

And he did. 

Peter didn't look for him, though. 

And that was a _good_ thing. 

* * *

(Peter _always_ looked for him.) 

* * *

It was when Georgia told him that she was pregnant that Victor realized that he wouldn't feel right if he didn't at least try to keep in contact with both his families. 

He sat down with a pen, and tried to remember how he and Peter worked. 

(How they'd worked before the anklet, before Neal had tried to mold himself to Peter's vision.) 

Eventually, instead of a letter, he found himself staring down at a doodle of two dancing cupcakes holding hands. 

It was a little bit of an odd variation on the cards he'd sent from prison. 

Some things had changed, between them, and somethings had stayed the same. 

* * *

_Happy Birthday!_

_Love, Georgie Caffrey & Vicky Moreau_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I spent a lot of times trying to think of satisfactory answers to questions like "how exactly did Kate survive the explosion?" and "how exactly did Kate acquire the straw trilby of Cape Verde fame?" and I came up with answers, but didn't end up using them in-story. I mostly just felt that as master of this universe, I ought to know. But if anyone's curious, you can ask!


End file.
